What Is Chiropractic Anyway?

Since I've done so much reading on the topic of late, I may as well tell you something interesting about the little hunk of meat in the middle of your chest, pumping lumpy custard at a rate of five litres per minute when resting, which is about 90% of all the blood you actually have, and up to thirty litres per minute during intense exercise. The heart's already got its work cut out for it by having to beat about 35 million times a year, and then we go and stress it out further. And it works quite simply like this:

There's this thing called your autonomic nervous system. Autonomic, because it takes care of itself without you having to pay much mind to it. Then there are two parts to the autonomic nervous system: the sympathetic and parasympathetic (that lying next to the sympathetic). Now the only reason there are two parts, is because some guy named it such. One neuron does not say to the next neuron, Hello Sympathetic, I'm Parasympathetic, pleased to meet you . That's ridiculous. It's all one nerve system from the body's point of view. Man, I'm really harping on this Oneness thing, aren't I? Welcome to the New Dogma: We are all one consciousness, the earth is self-projected, there's no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we're just an imagination of ourselves. Now for the weather...

The rhyme goes resting and digesting for the parasympathetic and fight or flight for the sympathetic. I'm sure you remember that? I've always remembered sympathetic insomuch that it feels sorry for you, so opens that extra can of whipass when you need it. It used to be quite relevant when we wore loin cloths, hunted lions, ran from tigers and clubbed our women. Boy, those were the days. But in the new sedentary Information Age, there ain't much running, and much less clubbing. What's worse though is that the stress is no longer overt. It's covert. We don't see and hear it in the conventional way. Yet we sense it. We experience. Every. Single. Day. It's insidious - much worse than a lion bite. It's on the news. It's on the streets. It's at home. It's in the office. It's on the phone. It's in our relationships. It's in what we read; what we write; what we say; what we hear.

Warning: Uncontrolled, this type of stress can cause cancer (amongst other things).

Your nerve system senses everything. Your autonomic nerve system senses everything, and its harmonious yo-yo between resting and fighting will begin to lean more one way than the other if the balance isn't maintained. All signals eventually converge on the heart, whether they originate hormonally or by thought. Really, you're not kidding anyone by saying impure thoughts don't get your heart racing, c'mon. The heart and its surrounding vessels are riddled with receptors that maintain perfect rate, rhythm, pressure and temperature at all times. One of the main receptors is the sinus node. It's the pacemaker: The puppy emergency medical technicians shout, Clear! and shock to kick into gear again. The sinus node responds to all these signals. To everything going on in your life. And the rest of the body does the best it can to keep it in a happy place.

When we get into patterns and repetitive cycles in our lives, which we know need to change but never make the effort, the autonomic balance becomes less yo-yo and more just... yo. And yo. And yo. There is no variability. Even constant thought of any nature has a profound effect on heart rate variability because since we are such gifted beings with the capacity to think, dream and imagine anything, there are connections from the front of the brain that skip all the regular pathways and alter heart rate directly. Studies have shown that even simple mental arithmetic challenges the sympathetic division. When was the last time you didn't reach for the calculator?

This is an exciting time. We're seeing more and more that "alternative health care" only got its name by virtue of people's priority list, and priorities change the more we know, understand and embrace - that all these wellness modalities affect change at a level beneath the conscious, which is quite appropriate considering all the new age stressors we face daily are also at a subconscious level! So how many wellness practitioners does it take to change a light bulb? One, but only if the light bulb really wants to be changed.

posted by Neil Bossenger  # 4:10 pm